Anicca and the allowable limits of permanence

Non of the five aggregates can be considered permanent, not even for a moment since change while persisting is evident ( ṭhitassa aññathattaṃ paññāyatī)

Reverend, the arising of form is evident, its vanishing is evident, and change while persisting is evident.
rūpassa kho, āvuso, uppādo paññāyati, vayo paññāyati, ṭhitassa aññathattaṃ paññāyati.
The arising of feeling …
Vedanāya
perception …
saññāya
choices (not exactly choices, volitional formations / some say mental coefficient )…
saṅkhārānaṃ
consciousness is evident, its vanishing is evident, and change while persisting is evident.
viññāṇassa uppādo paññāyati, vayo paññāyati, ṭhitassa aññathattaṃ paññāyati.
These are the things for which arising is evident, vanishing is evident, and change while persisting is evident.’
Imesaṃ kho, āvuso, dhammānaṃ uppādo paññāyati, vayo paññāyati, ṭhitassa aññathattaṃ paññāyatī’ti (SN 22.37).

A wise turtle once said: ( Kungfu Panda) :turtle: :rofl:

It chnges while existing (ṭhitassa aññathattaṃ)

Time

Time is one of those topics that buddhism doesn’t explain much about. However, from the information available in the EBTs, we can get an idea on the expression of time.
Biddhism discusses about time but it lacks a direct definition. Blessed One’s teachings teach us samsara is something which has no ends.

Anamataggoyaṃ bhikkhave, saṃsāro. Pubbā koṭi na paññāyati
Mendicants, transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found
Hereby we can assume time has no ends, since saṃsāra ia a spending of time.
As we can find in buddhism, the present is rather discribed as dependantly originated (paccuppanna).
(atītānāgatapaccuppannaṃ ) the present is paccuppanna. A moment of existence is smaller than the conscious moment. Unmindful minds are not capable of seeing this process where the mind recognizes the process as a permanent existance. But the reality is impermanence: the continuous changing. Thus it would take more than the conscious mind to grasp the moment. We are not normally oriented to this type of dimension in the nature of a moment of existence. Therefore, our expectation is permanence where we experience impermanence due to the unique experiential process termed pratityasamutpada/ paticcasamuppada, translated as dependent or relational-origination. There should be some word to explain this difference of the expectation and the reality: time.

Time is not an ideal(paramatta)
Generally, the experience of impermanence can be felt as time. From the Buddhist stand-point, experiential events do not take place or flow in time . Rather, it would be more accurate to say that events flow as time, thus denying any primacy to an absolute status of time.

The concept of time (kala) is a general concept which is used in the ordinary conventional sense, such as, variations of clock time or the psychological nature of time.

The experience of time

The present can only be thought of as the line that separates the past and the future. Even though it is an information/ description(paññatti) the ordinary mind does not have much ability to experience it. The assumption that the present exists is not a self-evident to a normal person.

The past is already gone. It has been experienced as a paññatti. The future is yet to come. We can also experience it as a paññatti. In our ordinary life, the present is not evidant experience because of five hindrances. Only a person who has developed his mindfulness up to its bojjhaṅga level can experience the present (moment): the limb of wisdom that is mindfulness (this post)

On the other hand there are schools who beleived a momentary existance (khanavāda).

The whole of Buddhist thought is permeated with the notion that life is transitory, not only in the fact that life terminates in death, but, more philosophically, that between birth and death we live in momentariness. This is the theory known as khana-vada/ksana-vada. Life is a series of experiential moments, each one unique but each is so infinitesimally small that except by a method of abstraction and by hypostatization the ordinary mind is unable to conceive it. A Buddhist sutta, Anguttara-Nikaya, asserts as follows "Arising (uppada) is revealed, duration (thita) is revealed, and dissolution (bhanga) is revealed. These are the three marks of the compounding nature of things ( Saṃkhata) ( Kenneth K. Inada, 1974)
Read this
The notion of time in early Buddhism

This may be in interest.

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